Wolf Story [NOOK Book]

Riverbank Review

School Library Journal

The Barnes & Noble Review

Children's stories are filled with Wicked Wolves and Big Bad Wolves, all with rapacious appetites, preferably for little girls but for any child in a pinch, perhaps with a pinch of salt. But has any wolf ever had so rapacious an appetite as a child has for a story? Especially a story with wolves in it. There's Red Riding Hood's wolf, of course, and Peter and his wolf. There are wolves at Willoughby Chase. There are the Three Little Pigs with their wolf. There used to be a little boy who cried wolf. There's even the Wolf of Gubbio, once big and bad but made un-wicked by the animals' best friend, St. Francis. There are both dangers and payoffs for children who identify with wolves — think what awaits Sendak's Max in his wolf suit or what Margaret Shannon's Roselupin does with her knitting in The Red Wolf. And as we get older there is also the lonely grief, as Mowgli finds, in not being a wolf after all.

On long car trips I used to entertain my youngest sister — and myself — by starring her in various Red Riding Hood–inspired adventures where she would pit her intelligence, with invariable success, against my most outrageously accented Monsieur le Loup. Unbeknownst to my younger self, I was participating in the noble tradition of parodic Big Bad Wolf literature. Catherine Storr's Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf has become such a family favorite that our wolf-eared copy has disappeared. Not long ago we giggled over the wolf in Little Bo Peep's Library Book by Cressida Cowell (she of How to Train Your Dragon fame) — his cookbook, "Basic Little Girl Cookery," includes such recipes as Mary Mary à la Mer, Muffet and Blackbird Pie, Petite Fille avec Curl, and, for unlucky days, Vegetarian Hotpot. Perhaps Colin McNaughton's Mr. Wolf, perennially unsuccessful in his predations on Preston Pig, already has a copy. Eugene Trivias has given us the redemptive Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig.

These books are all wonderful wallows in wolfiness, but for the parent faced with a child consumed with the desire to hear the same story for the zillionth time, especially if it's a story with a wolf in it, joy has come with the reprinting of William McCleery's 1947 classic Wolf Story. Five- year-old Michael is adamant that he wants his father to tell him another story about Waldo the wolf, even though Waldo has been in every story since Christmas. And no matter how plaintively Michael's father, a true Everyparent, cries out, "Haven't we had enough stories about terribly fierce wolves?" we find ourselves with another Wolf Story.

McCleery's wonderful riff on telling yet another story about wolves captures the affectionate tussling of off-the-cuff storytelling. Michael's father is the godlike parent-creator whose words have the power to bring a whole shaggy world into being. He can try to turn the story into a boring and quiet direction to put Michael to sleep, and sometimes it even works. But Michael, at five years old, has tasted the heady delights of being the unsleepy power behind that godlike throne. More powerful than the words that create are the words that boss the creator into creating in the first place. For Michael has learned "You can make anything happen in a story." Thus he imperiously nudges his father, "Make it that there is a hole in the fence," or "Make it that [Waldo] gets up and runs away" ("this way we can have more story!"), and above all "Make it long."

"I don't want to make it too scary," said Michael's father.

"Yes!" cried the boys. "Make it too scary! Horribly, horribly scary."

Oh, the power — and exhaustion — of the storytelling parent.

As each thin old wave slid down the sandy slope away from the beach it ran smack into a fat new wave coming toward the beach. The fat new wave would trip over the thin old wave, trip and stumble and tumble and flop right on its face with an angry RRROARRR. Ssswishhh . . . RROARRR! Ssswishhh . . . RRROARR!

Right beside the two boys, Michael's father was making a similar noise, going Aahhhh . . . poooooooo! . . . aahhh . . . poooooo! . . . . It would have put the boys to sleep if it had not been naptime.

Reviewer: Alexandra Mullen